Category Archives: Networking

One of the streaming services I use called NowTV recently launched an Irish service alongside their UK service which I was using. The Irish service costs _double_ the cost in UK. They have also begun geoblocking all Irish users and also users of VPN Services like ExpressVPN and PrivateInternetAccess from using the UK service.

To get around this I decided to set up my own VPN server on AWS in their London datacenter to get around the geoblocking.

The easiest way I have found to set up a VPN server is to use PiVPN (http://www.pivpn.io/) which was designed for use on Raspberry Pi but can be installed on any Debian based machine.

There has been a few recent guides on how to install PiVPN but this one focusses on installing on AWS.

A prerequisite for this guide is that you have an AWS account. If this is your first time using AWS then you can avail of their free tier for the first year which means you could have the use of a reliable VPN server free for a whole year. You will also need an SSH keypair.

I have been procrastinating for a very long time about whether or not to take the plunge and upgrade my office/home wifisetup. The goal of the upgrade is to have complete high speed wifi coverage throughout my house and seamless hand over between access points.

All Ubiquiti products seem to be the industry GOTO product and we use them at Canonical sprints where we’ve never had a problem. I also purchased 305m spool of cat6 cable and a Platinum Tools EZ-RJPRO Crimp Tool and connectors to make it easier to properly terminate the connections.

UniFi AC Lite AP

All the access points are (POE) Powered Over Ethernet so will not require power points in the ceiling.

This setup does require using Ubiquiti Unifi controller software but thankfully there is a docker image which sets this up and which I can run on my Freenas box.

All this means I should achieve my goal highspeed wifi throughout the house and seamless handover between access points. It will also hopefully mean that I no longer require any ethernet over powerline adapters.

I plan on taking a few pictures of the setup as it progresses as well as performing speed tests.. watch this space.